Will Some Saints Be Happier in Heaven?
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00:00:05.000 | In eternity, will some saints in heaven be more happy than others?
00:00:09.000 | That's the question from Ken, who writes in to ask this.
00:00:12.000 | Pastor John, do you believe, as Jonathan Edwards did, that Christians will enter eternity
00:00:16.000 | at differing degrees of happiness based on the depth and measure
00:00:20.000 | of our spiritual development during our earthly life?
00:00:23.000 | Or do you believe, as many Christians do, that all Christians enter heaven as equals
00:00:28.000 | at the foot of the cross, with the same degree of holiness and happiness for all of eternity?
00:00:33.000 | That is, do you believe in a hierarchy of happiness in heaven?
00:00:38.000 | Well, the short answer is I agree with Edwards, but some of the alternatives that Ken set up
00:00:48.000 | might not be exactly right. So let me try to dig in a little bit to try to explain
00:00:54.000 | what I and Edwards would mean. Let me put it in a larger context.
00:00:59.000 | The New Testament describes the relationship between our obedience and our condition,
00:01:06.000 | our happiness in the age to come, in three ways.
00:01:10.000 | Number one, and this is most basic, the most basic description of the relationship
00:01:16.000 | between our obedience now is that it is not the ground of our acceptance with God
00:01:26.000 | now or in the age to come. It's not the ground or basis or foundation of our justified standing
00:01:36.000 | in his presence. So Paul says negatively, "By the works of the law, no human being
00:01:43.000 | will be justified in his sight." And positively, he says, "We hold that one is justified
00:01:50.000 | by faith apart from works of the law." That's Romans 3:20 and 3:28.
00:01:56.000 | So none of our works, none of our obedience is the ground of our justification.
00:02:02.000 | It could never be. It's never good enough. It's always contaminated. It's never full enough.
00:02:06.000 | We have to have Christ. So we stand before God in eternity, accepted, loved, forgiven,
00:02:13.000 | justified on the basis of Christ alone, Romans 5:19.
00:02:18.000 | "By the obedience of one man, the many will be appointed righteous."
00:02:25.000 | So that's the first and most basic thing to say about the relationship between
00:02:30.000 | obedience now and happiness in the age to come.
00:02:34.000 | Number two, the New Testament also teaches that our obedience now confirms that we are
00:02:43.000 | chosen by God, called by God, born again, have saving faith.
00:02:48.000 | So while obedience isn't the foundation of God's being for us, it is the confirmation
00:02:57.000 | that God is 100% for us. For example, 2 Peter 1:10, "Be diligent to confirm your calling
00:03:06.000 | and election, for if you practice these things, you'll never fall."
00:03:11.000 | Or Hebrews 12:14, "Strive for the holiness without which you won't see the Lord."
00:03:19.000 | Or Romans 8:13, "If by the Spirit we put to death the sinful deeds of the body,
00:03:26.000 | we will live." So obedience is necessary for eternal life, but not as foundation,
00:03:35.000 | but as confirmation. Now here's the third one, and this is the one that's most
00:03:40.000 | important for the question. The New Testament teaches that our obedience
00:03:45.000 | results in rewards in the age to come that differ from each other according to
00:03:53.000 | the measure of our obedience. So the question that was asked was, "Will there
00:03:58.000 | be differing degrees of holiness and happiness, or will we all enter heaven as
00:04:03.000 | equals in holiness and happiness for all eternity? Do you believe there will be
00:04:08.000 | hierarchy in heaven?" And my view is this, and I think it's the same as Edward's.
00:04:13.000 | He helped me a lot on this. We will be rewarded differently in the age to come,
00:04:20.000 | but everyone will be fully happy. There will be no gap between anyone's capacity
00:04:28.000 | for happiness on the one hand and anyone's fullness of happiness on the other hand.
00:04:34.000 | There'll be no frustration over any of these differences. And the rewards in
00:04:40.000 | their essence—and we'd have to talk a lot more about this maybe—but the rewards
00:04:47.000 | in their essence are differing capacities for happiness in God. Like, it's not a
00:04:53.000 | Cadillac and a Chevrolet. That's very irrelevant. If you get down to the essence
00:04:59.000 | of what would be a good reward in heaven, it's knowing and tasting and having a
00:05:07.000 | capacity for greater delights in God and awareness of God and enjoyment of God.
00:05:12.000 | And I think that's what Edwards means when he says there are differing degrees
00:05:17.000 | of holiness and glory, since the essence of holiness and the essence of glory is
00:05:24.000 | the heart's treasuring and esteeming of God above all things. Our God-treasuring
00:05:31.000 | happiness is our holiness and our glory. That's why Edwards talks about different
00:05:37.000 | degrees of holiness, different degrees of glory. Not that there are unholy people
00:05:44.000 | in heaven or inglorious people in heaven or unhappy people in heaven, but that
00:05:51.000 | everybody's capacities will be full, but the capacities are different. And with
00:05:58.000 | those differences, there will be no envy in those with smaller capacities. There'll
00:06:05.000 | be no boasting in those with greater capacities. Benevolence from the ones that
00:06:12.000 | are greater and humility will be perfect in both so that it will involve no sin
00:06:20.000 | whatsoever, no resentment, no jealousy, no envy, no arrogance, no demeaning of
00:06:26.000 | anybody. And in that sense, we're all equal. We're all sinless. We all stand on
00:06:32.000 | common ground at the foot of the cross, totally dependent on grace to provide
00:06:37.000 | every measure of happiness and every measure of holiness. Here's another
00:06:43.000 | clarification. All Christian obedience now and forever is done by God's grace.
00:06:52.000 | 1 Corinthians 15 10, "By the grace of God I am what I am. I worked harder, but it
00:06:58.000 | was not I but the grace of God." So what God rewards is the fruit of his own
00:07:05.000 | grace in our lives. So there's no thought that rewards are earned in the sense of
00:07:12.000 | giving God something that he then has to recompense because he didn't have it
00:07:17.000 | already. If you wonder, "Where does all that come from in the Bible?" Okay, here's
00:07:23.000 | just a few texts, and there are more. Here's 2 Corinthians 5 10, "We must all
00:07:29.000 | appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what
00:07:35.000 | is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil." That's amazing. So
00:07:45.000 | there are negative and positive consequences for the believer in heaven.
00:07:53.000 | Now what in the world does he mean by negative consequences like good or evil?
00:07:59.000 | And the closest text I think that sheds light on that is 1 Corinthians 3 14 and
00:08:05.000 | 15, and it goes like this, "If the work that anyone has built on the foundation
00:08:11.000 | of Christ survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he
00:08:19.000 | will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." So
00:08:28.000 | there's some loss of what might have been because we built with wood, hay, and
00:08:35.000 | stubble instead of silver and gold and precious stones. Ephesians 6 8, Paul
00:08:41.000 | stresses the correlation between good deeds and divine rewards. He says, "Slaves
00:08:48.000 | serve the Lord knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive
00:08:58.000 | back from the Lord." Whatever good. That's amazing. Every single little whiff of
00:09:06.000 | goodness that God enables us to do is going to have its appropriate
00:09:11.000 | recompense in heaven. That means that good deeds are noted, rewarded, and I
00:09:17.000 | think—a little controversy around this, I suppose—I think that statement would be
00:09:22.000 | meaningless if everyone received the same level of reward. So just one last
00:09:31.000 | word on this issue of hierarchy. It sounded like Ken's question saw that as a
00:09:37.000 | negative, like, "Whoa, hierarchy in heaven would be a bad thing," and what I
00:09:42.000 | would just encourage Ken and everybody who's listening to do is read Edwards on
00:09:48.000 | this. Let me give just a taste of what he says. This is Edwards. "Though all"—he's
00:09:57.000 | talking about us in the age to come in heaven—"though all are perfectly free
00:10:02.000 | from pride, yet as some will have greater degrees of divine knowledge than others
00:10:09.000 | and will have larger capacities to see more of the divine perfections, so they
00:10:16.000 | will see more of their own comparative littleness and nothingness and therefore
00:10:22.000 | will be the lowest abased in humility." So when you read a sentence like that, you
00:10:28.000 | say, "Well, that's going to be a kind of hierarchy that has never existed before."
00:10:34.000 | Oh my, what a counterintuitive hierarchy. Thank you, Pastor John. Good
00:10:38.000 | encouragement to press on in love and good deeds. And not long ago we did a
00:10:43.000 | series of episodes on heaven with guest Randy Alcorn. Some of you may remember
00:10:47.000 | that series. It was a fascinating week, and I asked him, "In eternity, will there be
00:10:51.000 | sports in heaven, travel in heaven, even sex in heaven? And how old will we appear
00:10:57.000 | in eternity?" You can find those episodes in the archive. You can search for the
00:11:01.000 | word "heaven" on the Ask Pastor John landing page, and you will find them there.
00:11:04.000 | To get to the landing page, go to DesiringGod.org. At the top of the page,
00:11:08.000 | click on the tab that says "More," and then click on "Ask Pastor John."
00:11:12.000 | Well, as Christians, preaching and singing is part of our weekly routine.
00:11:17.000 | But if you look around, it's a really odd routine. So why do we preach, and why do
00:11:22.000 | we sing? Pastor John will explain tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for
00:11:26.000 | listening to the podcast.
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